Page 29 of Claiming His Brat

She turned to see him standing there, a furious expression on his face and she couldn’t help cringing. It felt like she shrank two feet and she was pretty sure she was finally going to get her punishment. She probably wasn’t as scared of that as she should have been. But considering how furious he looked in that moment, she was going to be lucky if she didn’t get it right there on the spot with all of the men watching.

She was having some serious regrets already, and she knew she should definitely hightail it out of there before she made it worse. Maybe, just maybe, she could save a little of her dignity and avoid being humiliated in front of an audience if she gave in quickly.

It was just too bad that her body seemed to switch to automatic pilot, leaving her common sense in the dust, to make a whole different set of choices for her. This day was justnotgoing according to plan.

Damn it.

Chapter 9

It hadn’t been the best day for Sam either. It started off with waking up to find Charlie gone,again. He turned over, reaching out for her, and found only cold sheets. He didn’t have even a second of hoping she was in the bathroom or kitchen this time, so at least there was that.

It was getting old and he was close to losing his temper with her. He wasn’t known for his patience to start with, but with her he always tried a little harder. And now of course, she was dealing with the double blow of losing her father and control of the ranch. He had a lot of sympathy about her father since he knew what losing a dad was like, and not a small amount of guilt for the latter even though it wasn’t his fault. It made him want to treat her carefully, giving her extra space to heal, but that wasn’t going to last for much longer.

It couldn’t because she was driving him nuts.

He sat up with a long, drawn-out sigh and rubbed at his eyes wearily, but the tired feeling was emotional and there wasn’t enough sleep in the world to fix it. He struggled to find the motivation to go through the motions of getting ready for the day ahead which meant he ended up running late.

Things didn’t improve after that. It seemed like one small annoyance after another was lined up to start his day off, and he could feel his temper fraying with each new addition. As he was leaving his house, he got a call that the shipment of grain he’d ordered to supplement the stock’s diet of hay was arriving—a whole week earlier than planned.

Cursing, he hung up and went to make sure there was room for it in the storage barn. Of course, there wasn’t, so he had to pull a couple of guys in to help him rearrange the sacks and bales to make room for the truckload that would be there at any time. As tempting as it was to let them offload it against the outside wall, he wasn’t going to trust the weather at this time of year.

They got everything shifted as fast as they could, with a lot of grunts and complaining. Just in time, as it turned out. He heard the beeping of the truck backing up to the open double-doors and then he was kept busy helping them empty the back. He could have left it to them, but experience had shown that he’d end up having to rearrange their haphazard unloading later. It was easier just to be there to direct them.

One thing led to another and by the time he got to the main barn to hand out assignments he was hours later than usual. It happened sometimes and most of his hands were seasoned and knew their jobs. They didn’t wait around to be told what to do and started handling the important things when it became obvious that he was going to be late.

So when he finally made it in, the last of the horses were already being fed and then led outside so the stalls could be raked out. A couple of the young guys who picked up summer jobs there had heaped wheelbarrows high with hay and were working their way down the line delivering a pile to each compartment.

The men called out greetings as he walked by and Sam jerked his head in a taciturn nod, they knew better than to expect much more from him. His mood tended towards grouchy until he made sure everything was getting done and had managed to get a few more cups of coffee into his system. With all the delays he was way behind on the caffeine intake, too.

It didn’t help that at the end of the row he found someone had been slacking. It wasn’t uncommon for this particular hand; he was a hard worker, but only when he was supervised. Left to his own devices, he tried to take short cuts and Sam wasn’t in the mood. “Jeff! Get your ass over here,” he snarled.

The man in question looked guilty as hell and knew better than to make the boss wait. He hurried over, trying to pull an innocent routine. “Yeah, boss?”

“Don’t you ‘yeah boss’ me, Jeff. You really think I can’t tell you forked fresh hay over the old stuff?” His steely eyes pinned the errant worker in place, forehead wrinkled with irritation.

“I didn’t, Sam! I swear, I got it cleaned out. She just waited to drop a load as soon as I was done and…”

“Don’t. Don’t even lie to my face like that or you’ll be leaving here with your last paycheck. I’m not an idiot, Jeff. I can tell old bedding from new. And even if it was true you shouldn’t have been cleaning until she was brought outside anyway. We have the horses on a routine for a reason.”

He waited to see if Jeff had anything else to say about it and then shook his head. “Get your ass in there and muck that out properly, and when you finish your stalls you can hoof it out to the north pasture and fix the fence. The storm the other day probably didn’t do it any favors and we’re going to have the cattle busting out when we move them over.”

“Aw, boss, c’mon. I hate running barbed wire; can’t you have one of the kids do it?”

Sam took a deep breath, slow and steady as he did his best not to lose his temper. “Do I need to repeat myself?” he asked in a tight, strained voice.

Jeff frowned and a sulky look crept onto his face. “Guess not. Probably take most of the morning.” His tone bordered on a whine.

“Good, then I won’t have to see you until noon break. And if you do a piss-poor job on the fence the way you did on the stall thiswillbe your last day. Am I clear?” Sam folded his arms across his chest just daring the ranch hand to try arguing about it, but Jeff knew when he’d pushed too far.

“Yessir. I’ll do it right,” he said.

Sam left it at that. It didn’t do any good to badger or repeat criticism once they’d gotten the message loud and clear, and he had his own work to do. But there was nothing like someone slacking off to put him in a bad mood. The work was hard and one person not doing their share meant everyone else had to put in extra time.

He prided himself on how smoothly things ran most days, but one problem tended to lead to another and pretty soon the whole day went to shit if he didn’t clamp down on it hard.

And then he turned around and saw Charlie standing there. She looked like she’d been rolling around on the ground, and he could see a leaf sticking to her shoulder. Her long dark hair was wildly mussed and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. Despite all of it, she still looked beautiful enough to make his heart ache and that was the last thing he needed while he was doing his best to keep the day from getting away from him.

“Not now, Charlie!” He hadn’t meant to bark the words, but he needed a minute without stress, and she was nothing but lately.

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